Regina Little Theatre

Living Together 101
December 20, 2006

Class, please settle down. Quiet please. Thank you.

Mr. Spencer is away today, so I will be your substitute teacher. My name is Ms. Cat, but you may call me Sabbie. It doesn’t appear as though Mr. Spencer has left a lesson plan, so, today, we will be discussing allegorical interpretations of insect imagery in postcolonial literature.

The image of the insect is surrounded by contradictions and ambiguities….

Yes, Jolaine? Oh, Mr. Spencer has left a lesson plan. Well, how helpful of you. It’s almost as though you used to be a teacher yourself.

The theatre is a master of illusion. Its goal is to make productions seem effortless from an audience perspective. But what really goes on behind the scenes? What does it take to put a production together and what is it like to be involved?

Sabrina Cataldo will explore this hidden side of the theatre in her blog, Backstage with Sabbie: A behind-the-scenes romp through the theatre world.

Hmmm…It says here that your assignment is to go see the Regina Little Theatre’s production of Living Together, which is playing from February 14 to 17. Well, it’s not postcolonial insect imagery, but it’s still very interesting. Fortunately for you, I studied this play a decade ago in English 378 and I kept all of my notes. (And they said these would never come in handy – hah.)

The Norman Conquests is a trilogy of plays written by British playwright and actor Alan Ayckbourn in 1974…

Well, that is a very good question, Colleen. Yes, the play the RLT is doing is called Living Together, not The Norman Conquests. However, Living Together is the second play in this trilogy. The first one was Table Manners, which the RLT did last year, and the last play is Round and Round the Garden, which, you never know, we could end up seeing on the main stage next year. Here’s a gold star, dear. With an inquisitive mind like that, you could be a journalist or something.

What makes these plays unique is that all three depict the same characters over the same weekend, but each play takes place in a different part of the house. Table Manners is set in the dining room, Living Together in the living room, and Round and Round the Garden in, naturally, the garden. The audience gets a different perspective of the action as well as new plot information with each change of venue. The plays can be watched in any order and stand on their own as individual plays, so you don’t have to see them all to understand what’s going on.

The Norman Conquests is written in the tradition of the British bedroom farce. Does anyone know what that is?

Yes, Nathan, you’re right. It’s a comedy that deals with an absurd situation having to do with extramarital relations. The women tend to be stronger and smarter than the men, who are usually henpecked and dominated.

That’s a great answer. I seem to have run out of gold stars, but here’s a blue one. I’ll just stick it to the centre of your forehead…there.

The characters in Ayckbourn’s plays each fit a “type” in the bedroom farce. Sarah is the “nagging housewife” who is always stressed out and feels she’s the only one keeping everything together. Reg is her “downtrodden spouse”, the henpecked husband who depends on Sarah for everything. Annie is the “frumpish virgin”, the responsible one in the family who cares for their hypochondriac mother. Tom is the “dimwitted rustic” who is trusting, reliable and stable, but is unable to understand jokes or respond to romantic innuendos. Ruth is the “icy career woman”, the breadwinner who was embarrassed into marrying Norman and whom one would refer to as “nice.”

And Norman, well, what can you say about Norman? He doesn’t fit into any category. He is a shaggy assistant librarian with delusions of an uncontrollable sex drive…

Yes, Martin. I said “sex.” Quit giggling.

Ahem. As I was about to say, The Norman Conquests is a commentary on relationships and marriage. Ayckbourn believed that happy marriages weren’t worth writing about. If my scrawling English class notes are correct, he once said, “Comedy ends in marriage and tragedy begins a year later.”

None of the characters in these plays is happy even through they are all in relationships. Instead, they are tired, frustrated, bored, stressed, depressed, angry, miserable. They got married because it was expected of them by society.

Although Tom and Annie aren’t married, they are no better off than the others. All of the relationships are dull, lacking in passion and romance…

Martin, please don’t pull Sharon’s pretty red hair…Yes, I do understand that you’re making a literary allusion to Anne of Green Gables by calling her “Carrots”, but it’s still not a very nice thing to do.

Now, where was I? Ah, yes, so Ayckbourn uses the character of Norman to shake things up – to challenge societal norms. (Norms/Norman – you can’t tell me that’s a coincidence.) Norman believes in passion and love, and although he’s an unlikely romantic interest (he’s “built like a haystack” and is quite obnoxious), he has affairs with each one of the women. He disrupts the stability, rituals and comfortable world of the other characters, serving as a catalyst to spur them into action…

Martin, please stop dancing on top of your desk. That is not safe at all... Oh, you got Andrea to reinforce your desk with steel cross braces for this very purpose? Well, that was a smart thing to do, but it’s still very distracting while I’m trying to teach. Please get down now.

Anyway, Norman brings out the hidden passion in the other characters, changing their lives forever. The plays end with a token restoration of order, but the endings of each are still unresolved or open. Ayckbourn believes it is artificial to end a play with closure because life isn’t perfect and tied up in a bow – it continues on before and after the play…

Martin, is that a note you’re passing to Darcy? Let me see that…It’s a picture of me with the caption, “Sabbie smellz,” and there are stink lines and everything.

Well, that’s it. I’m taking you to the principal’s office.

Class, you’re going to have to find me at the Green Room party to learn more about The Norman Conquests – such as how rituals of civility are challenged throughout, and how the imagery of the Victorian home in decay reflects the social and political atmosphere of the plays.

Patrick, you seem like a responsible manager type – I’m leaving you in charge while I’m gone. The class assignment is to read all of the Backstage with Sabbie columns on the Regina Little Theatre website and write an essay about how wonderful you think they are. Extra credit if you email your essays to me as fan mail at: backstagewithsabbie@gmail.com...

No, Martin, you are not the embodiment of the Norman character because you challenge societal norms with your behaviour – you are just disrupting my lesson.

Sigh. There’s one in every class….